[ad_1]
Early Thursday, British Overseas Secretary Liz Truss stated in a tweet that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and fellow British Iranian nationwide Anoosheh Ashoori “have landed safely within the UK and are reunited with their households and family members.”
“Welcome house,” she stated.
Emotional pictures posted on social media by Truss, Amnesty Worldwide UK and the FreeNazanin marketing campaign group which pushed for her launch, present Zaghari-Ratcliffe hugging her daughter Gabriella and husband Richard Ratcliffe upon her arrival on the RAF Brize Norton airbase in Oxfordshire.
Pictures additionally present Ashoori being reunited together with his household.
The previous prisoners had been flown from Iran on a Royal Air Drive aircraft, which landed within the UK simply after 1:00 a.m native time Thursday.
Their launch was hailed by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as “large achievements” for British diplomacy. “I pay tribute to the tireless efforts of those that have labored for six years to make at the moment’s occasions attainable,” Johnson wrote in a tweet.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s native UK Member of Parliament Tulip Siddiq tweeted a photograph of her on board a aircraft Wednesday as she made her means house.
“It has been 6 lengthy years — and I can not consider I can FINALLY share this picture,” wrote Siddiq. “Nazanin is now within the air flying away from 6 years of hell in Iran.”
Ashoori’s household stated in an announcement on Twitter, “1673 days in the past our household’s foundations had been rocked when our father and husband was unjustly detained and brought away from us. Now, we will sit up for rebuilding those self same foundations with our cornerstone again in place.”
Ashoori was held in Iran for 5 years after he was arrested by Iranian intelligence brokers in Tehran in 2017. He was convicted of spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence company and sentenced to jail for 12 years, Iran state information company IRNA reported.
Many years-old debt settled
Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori’s return house got here as Truss introduced the UK had settled a decades-old £400 million ($524 million) debt owed to Iran, which Iran’s Overseas Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian denied was linked to the prisoner launch.
“After extremely complicated and exhaustive negotiations, the greater than 40-year-old debt between the Worldwide Navy Companies and the Ministry of Protection of Iran has now been settled,” Truss stated in assertion to Parliament.
The debt is for undelivered armored automobiles and tanks, initially ordered by Iran however canceled by the UK in response to the Iranian revolution of 1979, in accordance with a analysis briefing revealed by the Home of Commons Library.
Iran’s state-run Press TV stated that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been handed over to the UK authorities, with out offering any additional particulars. The nation’s semi-official Fars information company stated she was being transferred to Tehran’s worldwide airport, Imam Khomenei, with a British negotiating staff.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan stated he was “delighted” that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been free of “wrongful imprisonment” in an announcement Wednesday.
‘Begin being a traditional household once more’
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband Richard stated the discharge of his spouse means they will “begin being a traditional household once more.”
Earlier than her arrival again within the UK, Ratcliffe advised reporters she acquired picked up by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at 11:00 a.m. native time (3:30 a.m ET) and though she “wasn’t actually allowed to talk” he was conscious of her actions.
“Her homecoming is a journey not an arrival. There will probably be an entire course of and hopefully we’ll look again in years to come back and we will probably be a traditional household,” Ratcliffe continued.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was first detained at a Tehran airport in April 2016 following a trip to see her household together with her daughter.
She was accused of working with organizations allegedly trying to overthrow the Iranian regime and was later convicted and sentenced to 5 years in jail.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her employer, the Thomson Reuters Basis, have repeatedly denied the espionage costs in opposition to her.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was given British diplomatic safety in 2019 and was designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty Worldwide.
She undertook at the least three starvation strikes throughout her detention, one in every of them in a determined bid to hunt medical remedy for lumps in her breasts and numbness in her limbs.
Her husband Richard Ratcliffe has additionally carried out starvation strikes in solidarity together with his spouse.
The couple’s daughter, Gabriella, who was simply 22 months previous on the time of her mom’s arrest, is now virtually eight.
In 2019, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s supporters stated she was transferred to the psychological ward of a hospital in Tehran and was being denied visits from her father.
In February 2020, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s household stated she believed she had contracted Covid-19 in Evin Jail outdoors Tehran.
CNN’s Jack Man, Angus Watson, Sarra Alayyan, Zeena Saifi, Hamdi Alkhshali, Vasco Cotovio, Nada Bashir and Lauren Mentioned-Moorhouse contributed to this report.
[ad_2]Source link